The reason for this is that on the Model B, *CAT, *LOAD and *SAVE are built into the MOS ROM, where they work for TAPE too and, for filing systems other than tape they are translated into the relevant FSC or OSFILE call. The likes of *ACCESS are provided by DFS and likewise for various other DFS and ADFS specific commands. The paged ROM call to offer a command offers an unrecognised command so the MOS always checked its own command table first before DFS/ADFS/NFS etc. got to see a command.I think *CAT has a special place in the (M)OS commands. Any abbreviation will run the first match in the OS command table which is mostly alphabetic.
Then, for the Master, it made sense to consolidate those commands that work across filing systems, including the file utils commands that were previously in the DFS so these are now all in the MOS command table. But, people will have got used to *CAT, *LOAD and *SAVE being able to be abbreviated very succinctly and may have even built that into programs, so the command table has these at the start for backwards compatibility,
Statistics: Posted by Coeus — Wed Apr 03, 2024 10:37 pm